[Turing] Atheist Answer #2

July 4, 2011 By Leah Libresco

This post is part of the Ideological Turing Test Challenge. Go to the tab above for an overview and remind yourself of the voting and commenting guidelines here. What’s your best reason for being an atheist? The evidence. The God of the Bible– and what else could “God” mean, in our culture?– just doesn’t seem to be operating in today’s world, speaking to prophets, working miracles, and so forth. It’s logical to extrapolate backwards and assume that such a being never did exist. If God is conceived in a more philosophical sense, the idea becomes unintelligible and untestable. In the past, some explanation of the order that we observe in the world was needed, so even a quite naturalistic thinker like Aristotle would postulate a “prime mover,” i.e., some sort of deity. For the same reason, in the 18th century, before Darwin’s theory of evolution came along, the intelligentsia turned to Deism rather than atheism. But Darwin’s theory explains how order emerges, leaving nothing for a creator God to do, except maybe set some ground rules, like the structure of the atom and the law of gravity. That’s so minimal that it would be a bit silly to personify it as a God. Let’s just say there are natural laws and be done with it. From there, science can in principle explain everything, including life and human beings and minds, though admittedly it has some ways to go yet before that task is complete. Some people try on the idea that they are nothing but a pile of molecules and don’t like it. Well, get used to it. There’s nothing else to be. What evidence or experience (if any) would cause you to believe in God? If you believed in some kind of god, what kind of evidence would be necessary to convince you to join a particular religion? The second question is easy: if I believed in a God, I would join whichever religion was really in touch with God, and/or had correct views about his nature. If none of the religions were right but one was close, I might join that one. If all of them were quite wrong, I wouldn’t join any, I’d just deal with God in my own way. I suppose there’s another possibility: if God seemed bad, I might refuse to join a religion since it would involved worshiping him. That’s getting a bit too hypothetical. As for what evidence would cause me to believe in God, that depends on what kind of God you mean. If you mean the God of the Bible, I’d believe in him if I saw the things that are done in the Bible being done– miraculous healings, the parting of oceans to liberate enslaved peoples, the moon turning to blood like I think it talks about in the book of Revelation, etc. If you mean the God of the philosophers– Hegel’s Absolute, say– I don’t think any evidence would make me believe in that kind of God. I don’t know what predictions that theory makes. You might say that I don’t understand the question. When you have ethical and moral disputes with other people, what do you appeal to? What metric do you use to examine your moral intuitions/cultural sensibilities/etc? Here I’m not too different from the Christians, since I don’t try to make up my own code of morality, I just follow what I’ve been taught, what’s acceptable in the culture around me, what seems right. I respect Jesus as a moral teacher. In particular, the Golden Rule, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” is about the best moral advice that there can be. In a moral dispute, what I’d be most likely to say is some form of “how would you like it if someone did that to you?” And that usually works. That said, there are some differences between my morality and the Christians’. For one thing, what is the point of all their rules about sex? “If it feels good, do it” is maybe a little naive, sometimes you can get overwhelmed by the passions of a moment into doing something you’ll regret later, or that hurts someone else. But ultimately, two consenting adults can enjoy sex without needing to feel guilty about it. Also, I of course don’t agree with Christians that “blasphemy” is morally wrong. I think Jesus said “judge not that ye be not judged,” and that goes for other people’s views as well as their behavior. To be fair, though, there are views I don’t want heard in public, too. Nazism, for example. Why is religion so persistent? We have had political revolutions, artistic revolutions, an industrial revolution, and also religious reformations of several kinds, but religion endures. Does this not suggest its basic truth? This goes back to the ethics question. I said that we should “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” but an amoral person might reply, “Why should I? That’s not in my interest.” And I wouldn’t really have an answer. The Christians would: they would say, “Because if you do, God will reward you with eternal bliss, while if you don’t, God will condemn you to eternal punishment.” And that’s why religion is so persistent: if people believe its claims, it provides powerful enforcement for society’s moral code. I’ve heard that Voltaire was talking with some friends, and they got onto the subject of God and started speculating that he might not exist, and Voltaire said that they’d better not let themselves be overheard by the servants, lest they start stealing the spoons. I think a lot of philosophers have followed lines of inquiry that pointed to atheism and been afraid to take that step, not just for fear of the civil authorities, but because they were afraid it would unleash lawlessness to admit that there is no God. Similarly, I suspect there are a lot of parents who are secretly atheist but take their kids to church because they want them to learn morality. It might be in your interest for other people to believe in God even if you don’t, especially for others to believe in Jesus as God, since the ethics of Jesus would make a person treat everyone else so well, if Christians really practiced it, which they sometimes do. It would be too crude to say that everyone fakes religion in order to fool other people into believing in God’s sticks and carrots to make them behave morally. Most of the time, people aren’t consciously using God as an instrument of social engineering. They tell guesses and half-lies and then come to believe them. They let their own reflections be biased. That said, the theory of evolution was a watershed. Before Darwin, people could conflate the morality-enforcer God with the creator God who had to be postulated to explain the order in the world. Now there’s no need for the divine watchmaker, so religion can’t hang its morality-enforcer God on that hook. It has become more defensive and obscurantist, maybe more dishonest. Voting opens Friday afternoon

7 Quick Takes (6/10/11)

June 10, 2011 By Leah Libresco

–1–

It’s been a very active commenting week here, which is exciting, but a little frustrating to me, since I’m packing/organizing in preparation for my DC move, and it limits my ability to respond as much as I’d like. Happily, commenters are frequently picking up the slack. When I asked a question about Christian epistemology (inspired by a Yudkowsky post), Matt Shafer, Brian Green, and Kevin all graciously offered explanations of their beliefs and answered some questions. Thanks!

Unfortunately, during a series of posts about trying to maintain an appropriate tone during interfaith dialogue, a couple conversations got ugly in the threads, so, later today, I’ll have a dedicated post on commenting expectations for the blog. I’m still not censoring comments (unless they’re irrelevant spam), so there won’t be any threat to back up my request, but I hope it’ll calm things down a bit anyway.

–2–

Oh, and speaking of Eliezer Yudkowsky (rationality researcher and author of my favorite fanfic – Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality), I’ve been starting to catch up with the read-all-of-Yudkowsky project coordinated by Luke of Common Sense Atheism. I’d like to recommend two linked posts for anyone who’s fond of a good thought experiment. In Archimedes’s Chronophone, Yudkowsky asks what you would say to Archimedes, provided you were using the phone that he’s placed some strange limitations on:

Unfortunately, Archimedes’s chronophone comes with certain restrictions upon its use: It cannot transmit information that is, in a certain sense, “too anachronistic”.

You cannot suggest, for example, that women should have the vote. Maybe you could persuade Archimedes of Syracuse of the issue, and maybe not; but it is a moot point, the chronophone will not transmit the advice. Or rather, it will transmit the advice, but it will come out as: “Install a tyrant of great personal virtue, such as Hiero II, under whose rule Syracuse experienced fifty years of peace and prosperity.” That’s how the chronophone avoids transmitting overly anachronistic information – it transmits cognitive strategies rather than words. If you follow the policy of “Check my brain’s memory to see what my contemporary culture recommends as a wise form of political organization”, what comes out of the chronophone is the result of Archimedes following the same policy of looking up in his brain what his era lauds as a wise form of political organization.

You might think the next step would be to prepare a careful series of Plato-style philosophical arguments, starting from known territory, and intended to convince an impartial audience, with which to persuade Archimedes that all sentient beings should be equal before the law. Unfortunately, if you try this, what comes out on Archimedes’s end is a careful series of Plato-style philosophical analogies which argue that wealthy male landowners should have special privileges. You followed the policy of “Come up with a line of philosophical argument intended to persuade a neutral observer to my own era’s point of view on political privilege,” so what comes out of the chronophone is what Archimedes would think up if he followed the same cognitive strategy.

The goal is to think about what cognitive strategies will be most likely to let you transcend the errors of your time, and then start planning how to adopt them. Yudkowsky has further ideas and critiques of some proposed solutions in his follow-up post.

–3–

Looking over my queued up links, it looks like this week’s Quick Takes are going to be a new looks/new information on recent posts themed. So, to match the arguments about free will that broke out on “Sam Harris, Psychopaths, and Moral Culpability,” I’d like to offer a link to a post of the topic straight from the Horseman’s mouth.

As I have argued, however, the problem is not merely that free will makes no sense objectively (i.e. when our thoughts and actions are viewed from a third-person point of view); it makes no sense subjectively either. And it is quite possible to notice this, through introspection.

In fact, I will now perform an experiment in free will for all to see: I will write anything I want for the rest of this blog post. Whatever I write is, of course, something I have chosen to write. No one has compelled to do this. No one has assigned me a topic or demanded that I use certain words. I can be ungrammatical, if I pleased. And if I want to put a rabbit in this sentence, I am free to do it.

But paying attention to my stream of consciousness reveals that this notion of freedom does not reach very deep. Where did this “rabbit” come from? Why didn’t I put an “elephant” in that sentence? I do not know. Was I free to do otherwise? This is a strange, and strangely vacuous, question.

There’s more, but I found it to be a strange and strangely vacuous argument.

–4–

A post written in response to a First Things On the Square essay (“Christian Parents and the HPV Vaccine“) ended up shifting in the comments section from a discussion of the rhetoric surrounding sexual sin to a debate about medical ethics and informed consent.

Do y’all want a full-fledged post from me on that topic? As you may recall, this question was at the heart of paper number four on my list of favorite papers I wrote in college.

–5–

At the end of yesterday’s post on my struggles and tactics trying to love my enemies, I mentioned a blog post in a throwaway comment about privilege, but it deserves more notice than that, so I wanted to highlight it here. It’s a compact summary of how privilege can manifest without the person who benefits from ingrained and/or arbitrary circumstance realizing they’re victimizing someone else. Reflecting on how privilege works can help you avoid harming others.

Notice how my explanation above was kind of stilted and confusing? Most discussions of privilege are, but not the one I’ve linked, so please check it out.

–6–

I’m stretching for the theme here, but since I mentioned Ted Haggard’s painfully awkward cameo in the pro-abstinence, low budget film I shared in last week’s Quick Takes, I think that’s enough of an excuse to link to Kevin Roose’s profile of Haggard in GQ.

(Kevin Roose is the author of The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University, which I read and enjoyed earlier this week).

–7–

And since that was two callbacks in that last take, here’s something completely new: a beautiful steampunk music video. (h/t Steampunk Fashion)

[Seven Quick Takes is a blog carnival run by Jen of Conversion Diary]

7 Quick Takes (2/8/11)

April 8, 2011 By Leah Libresco

–1–

Last week, I mentioned in my quick takes that I was going to see an ex-gay speaker who came to visit campus. There’s been a big backlash on campus, so I’ve been posting about my reaction with a news roundup, a brief defense of the speaker, and an example of (perhaps inadvertently) hurtful rhetoric. Today, the first real defense of the talk came out in The Yale Daily News, so I’m linking it here and I’m adding it to the first news roundup page.

–2–

And speaking of the YDN, I don’t always feel a need to link my Friday columns here, but this week is different. Yale is currently being sued by a group of former and current students under the provisions of Title IX for creating a hostile to women environment by continually mismanaging complaints of sexual assault. My article gives a little background on the complaint and is focused on the way that many teens and adults don’t understand how to properly obtain consent when trying to begin a sexual relationship. Several students I know have been taken advantage of even though their partners did not realize they were being abusive. I hope you’ll read it and if you agree with my concerns, that you’ll share it with any friends who are or are becoming sexually active.

–3–

Those first two are more serious/depressing than my quick takes often are, so, to make it up to you, the rest of them will be more lighthearted and funny. Any if I’m looking for funny, I can’t do better than this Old Spice ad hawking a Christian catalogue (h/t Tristyn)

–4–

My boyfriend and I disagree about how funny the next video is — he swears by it and I swear at it. Brace yourself:

(h/t Friendly Atheist)

–5–

I cannot tell a lie, I would very much like to attend a service at the SciFi and Fantasy Friendly Church that Pharyngula linked to. Lo!

–6–

Don’t be so quick to write off that kind of service. The best conversion story I’ve ever read was posted this week at Why I’m Catholic by a former Wiccan practitioner turned Catholic. Check it out:

I also enjoyed comic books. (Bear with me; this will all tie together in a moment.) My favorite character was from The Uncanny X-Men, a blue, fuzzy mutant with a spaded tail and a penchant for swashbuckling with a sword. His name was Nightcrawler, and he was a devout Catholic–possibly the only devout Catholic to ever star in comic books. He was something new in my (admittedly limited) experience at the time–a Catholic clearly in love with God, and clearly happy about it.

My affection for the character soon translated to my creative free time. I started writing stories for my friends, and eventually role-playing the character in a comic book RPG. I played in other RPGs as well, and wrote on a semi-pro level in the fantasy and horror genres. Far more often than I intended, my original characters would end up Catholic, too. As a result, I was often challenged by other players and readers about my characters’ motivations, which forced me to turn to Catholic apologetics so I could accurately defend the reasoning behind my characters’ actions.

I confess, I am charmed.

–7–

My blog mainly focuses on the clash between Christianity and atheism, but there’s no reason I need to be that limited on a humor post. I was quite amused by this relyricization of Lonely Island’s “I Just Had Sex” to become “Just Had Chametz” in honor of Passover.

Enjoy the weekend!

[Seven Quick Takes is a blog carnival run by Jen of Conversion Diary]

Inducing a Moral Jump Discontinuity (A thought experiment)

March 14, 2011 By Leah Libresco

Tristyn of Eschatological Psychosis jumps the line by prefacing her comment on my review of Brook’s The Social Animal with ‘TRANHUMANIST QUESTION.’ I am powerless to resist. Here’s what she asked:

So, we have established that if, in fact, holding warm beverages makes you nicer, going out of your way to find a warm beverage before interacting with an annoying person is acceptable to you. Seems fairly reasonable, though (I think) clearly in a closer-to-ideal world we wouldn’t need such crutches, but we all of us bear far heavier sins than leaning on chocolate from time to time, for whatever reason.

What if there was a drug that made you kinder, more charitable, more forgiving? Let’s say even that it has some negative side effects– how about all the side effects of amphetamines, drugs commonly prescribed to treat psychology/behavior (as opposed to the way, say, morphine treats the body, or even how antibiotics treat infections– hopefully the distinction I’m making is clear?).

From my perspective, it seems obvious that it’s wrong to take the drug. I’m wondering if you agree? My “conclusion” is also way more intuitive than logical. It’s not as though the drug eradicates free will– it’s kind of like soft paternalism, but in your head. Does that meaningfully devalue our moral agency, and does an atheist care if it achieves her ends?

I’m really torn. I can’t tell whether my discomfort with temperament modification through pharmaceuticals as opposed to through talk therapy or experience or really focused discussions of metaphysics is just an ‘eeew!’ reaction to anything that seems artificial. I know I’m much more hesitant about this course of action than I am about the others.

Plenty of that is motivated by the low level of faith I have in the pharmacological industry and a possibly misplaced confidence in my own moral conduct. Although there are a wide range of issues that are productively dealt with by chemical adjustment (paralyzing depression, schizophrenia, etc), psychopharmacology seems a lot more suited to pruning back particularly destructive deviations than fostering some idealized behavior. The definition of normal or stable they use is much too limited to be of much help to people who fall sufficiently close to acceptable, as I imagine I do. (If you want to know more about the way psychiatrists have a tendency to project one mode of behavior on everyone, check out Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche).

Even if those problems were resolved, I run into the same problem that troubles Tristyn. I value my own will and my choices to direct it towards its proper functioning. Medicating myself better seems like cheating and valuing correct behavior over correct attitude towards behavior. I’m also running into the strange problems of persistence of identity through time. If my attitudes towards others improves by a jump discontinuity rather than according to the normal course of events, it feel a little like I’ve annihilated myself to allow space for an upgraded version.

Should my metaphysical qualms really stop me from forcing myself to treat others better? To what extent should I permit myself to inflict my bad and hurtful behavior on others for the sake of preserving my own moral agency? Could I be called to sacrifice my agency and my personal moral development for the sake of others? Could I ethically put myself in situations where I would burden or hurt others for the sake of the moral development it would cause me?

I’m not really sure, and I’d be interested in your perspectives. And for one special bonus question for Christians like Tristyn: are any of you profoundly uncomfortable with a pharmacological fix but comfortable with the famous “May I kill it?” passage in C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce? (The scene I’m referring to is available here). Both involve being freed of immoral tendencies by consenting to profound alteration. Thoughts?

Say a Little Prayer for Me?

March 11, 2011 By Leah Libresco

CL of The Warfare is Mental posed a couple of questions about being prayed for this week, and, since my opinions on the matter have changed substantially in the past few years, I want to have a crack at them. He asked:

Has anybody ever told you that they were praying for you?
If so, do you know why they were?
Regardless of 2, how did this make you feel, and why?
What do you think of people who tell other people they were praying for them? Is your opinion always X or Y, or, does your opinion change given circumstances and context?

To the best of my knowledge, no one ever prayed for me before I went to college and became friends with practising Christians. My default feeling, if someone had prayed for me would have been mildly to fairly aggrieved, depending on the circumstances.

I know my boyfriend prays for my conversion, and the first time we discussed it, I felt angry. To me, prayer felt like an assault — an attempt to change my mind without convincing me and without my consent. It felt like cheating.

It’s a fairly illogical thing to think, since, as an atheist, I don’t believe prayer works. It’s about as silly as the time I found out a friend was praying for me not to be bisexual, and I briefly wondered whether I should have my liberal Christian friends counter-pray on my behalf.

I’m less bothered by it now, at least when I’m being prayed for by close friends. I trust my friends to want the best for me, and I know they don’t hold back from trying to help me just because we disagree about how to reach that goal. Those disagreements aren’t limited to my religious friends; I frequently disagree with secular friends about actions I should take or attitudes I should cultivate — disagreements which are often sparked by my attachment to virtue ethics or my general prissiness.

I’m not (or shouldn’t be, anyway) angry at any of them for disagreeing with me and trying to convince me I’m wrong. I can’t logically be angry at them for trying to effect the change they seek. And I recognize that religious folk see miraculous change as less autonomy-crushing than I do.

I only really get teed off about two kinds of prayer: prayer that is offered in lieu of action and prayer that is offered by people who don’t know me. Prayer is a poor substitute for practical action and hard conversations, and if my friends think I’m going wrong, I’d prefer they do me the courtesy of explaining why and making a pitch, rather that just praying for God to intervene.

I distrust impersonal prayer because I don’t trust the person praying to intervene in my life. I wouldn’t want a stranger to try to change my personal beliefs or choices without getting to know me and trying to understand my position. I’m not more ok with their too-familiar intervention just because it takes the form of prayer.

Living on a Prayer

March 2, 2011 By Leah Libresco

I really want to reply to Alex Knapp, especially since he’s already found the time to respond to Rust Belt Philosophy’s critique of both me and Knapp, but I’ve been trying to prep for three exams, and two presentations all occurring in the space of two and a half day, so not so much on my end.

I’m still not up to doing a big post on consequentialism, so I thought I’d share a little of my coursework to tide you over. My epidemiology methods class read a well-known paper from 1999 called “A Randomized, Controlled Trial of the Effects of Remote, Intercessory Prayer on Outcomes in Patients Admitted to the Coronary Care Unit.” And then we had to any problems we had with the study design and what this illustrated about tradeoffs you have to make in research. The exercise was instructive and (to punchy, exam-mad me) hilarious, so here are the highlights from my notes for you to read while I keep coding.

Prayers for patients came from a variety of denominations. Did this introduce confounding, since God might only be listening to one type of prayer? Given the wide range of religious practices, it would be prohibitively expensive to run clinical trials of each prayer tradition separately.

Researchers did not specify how to pray, so some people may have prayed much more than others. Should researchers have tried to calculate a dose-response relationship?

Now here’s my favorite: should researchers be required to obtain informed consent from patients who are being prayed for?

Doctors were worried that telling people that people were praying for them, or even that they might be prayed for would cause patients to assume they were seriously ill, even if the doctor explained it was part of a clinical trial. And after all, people pray for sick people with or without their consent. Do doctors need to obtain consent for a procedure that only exposes patients to risks they are already subject to?The researchers decided consent was not required, since there are “no known risks to receiving intercessory prayer.” When ever you see a sentence like that, remember that means a grad student in the lab was tasked to spend a day or two on PubMed trying to make sure that there’s no contrary result to cite.

And speaking of that, I’m off to the computer lab.

Covenant marriage isn’t suited to Christians

December 10, 2010 By Leah Libresco

This post is part of a series on covenant marriage.

For Catholics and theologically conservative Christians, there is no difference between a covenant marriage and the standard form. In either case, the marriage is sealed as a promise between both spouses but also as a promise between the couple and God. Although the couple could release each other from the commitment they have made to each other, the marriage cannot be dissolved unless God, through his human agents, releases them from their commitment to Him (presumably in the form of an annulment).

To embrace covenant marriage implies that Christians who have standard marriages are only held to the lesser standard of state law, rather than religious law. From a Christian point of view, state law is entirely irrelevant to proper conduct.

It would be impossible for the Christian conception of marriage to be enshrined in federal law. No atheists (or pretty much anyone but Christians and possibly Jews) could be free to marry, since a lack of belief in the Christian God could constitute an impediment to marriage, since an atheist could not knowingly and deliberately consent to a Christian marriage and remain an atheist in most cases. Allowing only perfect Christian marriages to be recognized by law would diminish the positive effects of civil marriage.

If Christians can’t have control of civil marriage, they’re better off not yoking themselves to that institution to begin with. As it stands, civil marriages will allow Catholic divorcées to remarry without annulments. For Christians, civil marriages should be treated as an entirely bureaucratic matter like filling out a 1040 form or writing a will. They are a way of interacting with the government, not a recognition of your commitment to your spouse.

Covenant marriage and modifications to the civil marriage code in general, should be intended for those who don’t have as strong a tradition or institution for marriage outside of civil marriage. If covenant marriage is to be of use to anyone, it needs to be of use to atheists and secularists. And this weekend, I’ll finally get around to explaining what purpose it serves for people like me.